Five years to the hour after the floodwalls burst in Hurricane Katrina, sending a tidal wave through their neighborhood, more than 1,000 people gathered in the Lower 9th Ward on Sunday morning to declare their loyalty to the place of their birth and to decry roadblocks in the path toward rebuilding.

View full sizeDavid Grunfeld, The Times-PicayuneKatrina devastated the area five years ago, still today, the Lower 9th Ward remains flooded with despair.

Some wore T-shirts or carried placards announcing their fierce loyalty to their still-devastated neighborhood. Some, like Monique Atkinson, wore T-shirts memorializing loved ones killed in the storm -- in her case, her aunt, Margie Lewis, 75, who was torn from her son's grasp and swept away by the floodwaters coursing through Gentilly.

Her body has never been found, Atkinson said.

And others repeated a common theme: that they are determined to stay in the Lower 9th, but that flaws in the Road Home program and other public assistance programs systematically discriminated against the historic blue-collar neighborhood that was one of the most severely damaged in the storm.

Some of that was voice by U,S. Rep Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who was critical of the Road Home program, "low-down, dirty insurance companies" and, to some extent, reformers who launched a vast experiment with charter schools after the storm. "We want our public schools back," Waters said to applause.

The ceremonies just a few blocks from the Industrial Canal floodwall that disastrously failed, unfolded in a landscape where three-fourths of the neighborhood's residents have been unable to return.

While the neighborhood is a showcase for some well-documented homes, erected by actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation, vast stretches remain vacant and weed-choked. And it was this condition that residents sought to emphasize at the memorial, which began with a second-line up North Claiborne to the top of the bridge over the Industrial Canal, where a wreath was laid.

Anna Firstley, a resident of the 9th Ward all of her life, said she was one of the first to rebuild her home but has mixed feelings about that decision. "It's a sad, sad situation," Firstley said. She said she is one of 13 occupants in the 1700 block of Alabo Street. A block away has only one occupied house, she said.

She described daily life among vacant, overgrown lots rife with snakes, rats and mice, "I'll be 72 next birthday, and I'll be doggone if I ever thought I'd have to live like this," she said.

Still, the dominant theme was residents' determination to dig in and make a new life where they are.

Calandthia Randall, who said she has rebuilt hr home in the 7th Ward, said she nonetheless feels the recovery is incomplete. "I'll be fully recovered when I see the city recovered," she said.